Dissociation as a coping mechanism

[PurpleWolf]

Have you been using dissociation as a coping mechanism, especially before transitioning?

This thread is inspired by Virginia's thread, about transness and DID:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,176195.0.html

and obviously also by my own experiences as a pre-everything trans guy  .

I'd like to hear what kind of dissociative behaviors or coping methods have you guys used? Did you try to just block it out of your mind at some point? Forget that you're even trans? Or were you trying to cope in society and in work etc. by just blocking away your emotions? (Note: This thread is about being transgender and using dissociation to cope before/during treatment for that. This is NOT about actual DID!) 

I came across a couple of interesting articles on this. Here is a quote from Zinnia Jones' post to give you some ideas:


https://genderanalysis.net/2017/06/depersonalization-in-gender-dysphoria-widespread-and-widely-unrecognized/

"I'm going to list some descriptions of certain feelings, and I'd like for any trans or gender-questioning readers to think about whether they've felt anything similar to this over the course of their lives.

- A sense of detachment or estrangement from your own thoughts, feelings, or body: "I know I have feelings but I don't feel them"
- Feeling split into two parts, with one going through the motions of participating in the world and one observing quietly: "There is this body that walks around and somebody else just watches"
- Feeling as if you have an "unreal" or absent self: "I have no self"
- Experiencing the world as distant, dreamlike, foggy, lifeless, colorless, artificial, like a picture with no depth, or less than real
- Being absorbed in yourself and experiencing a compulsive self-scrutiny or extreme rumination
- Having an ongoing and coherent dialogue with yourself
- Feeling like a veil or glass wall separates you from the world
- Emotional or physical numbness, such as a feeling of having a head filled with cotton
- Lacking a sense of agency – feeling flat, robotic, dead, or like a "zombie"
- Inability to imagine things
- Being able to think clearly, but feeling as if some essential quality is lacking from your thoughts or experience of the world
- A sense of disconnectedness from life, impeding you from creative and open involvement with the world


Depersonalization symptoms can also occur in the context of untreated gender dysphoria, yet this is not widely recognized among the public or in most literature on transness and transitioning. Descriptions of depersonalization-like experiences feature prominently in many trans people's recountings of their lives prior to transition, and these symptoms can heavily impact their general quality of life. But with very little attention given to depersonalization as a discrete symptom experienced by many with gender dysphoria, some trans people may struggle to recognize that this could be an indicator of dysphoria, and may not be aware that they could find relief via transitioning."


This article then is about the correlation between being trans and having actual DID! Very interesting also!
https://di.org.au/transgender-multiplicity/

[Kylo]

Yes, but not consciously, nor exactly in the same way as described here or by that webpage.

I didn't intend or realize I was dissociating myself from my physical form. But it happened. Instead I ended up being much more aware of my internal and emotional self, so the dissociation described toward emotion doesn't apply to me. I very much felt like I was living a life in my own head, sort of 'piloting' my body, but never feeling fully connected to it or altogether associated with it. I don't mean in the sense I couldn't feel physical pain or anything like that. I mean more a psychological identification with the whole, the "whole person", and have often described myself to myself as more like a ghost than a whole person. That is a poor way to describe it, but as an analogy it describes a feeling of a lack of wholeness or substance as a person quite well.

I also still have a slight problem with connecting my appearance in a mirror to myself. As in, I know that it is me in the mirror (before transition), obviously, but that person in the mirror looks "strange" to me. Like I know it but also that I haven't spent enough time looking at it to feel as if it is comfortably familiar. This: Being able to think clearly, but feeling as if some essential quality is lacking from your thoughts or experience of the world is particularly close to how I'd describe feeling like a "ghost". And Being absorbed in yourself and experiencing a compulsive self-scrutiny or extreme rumination, Having an ongoing and coherent dialogue with yourself and an inability to imagine things ring a bell as well.

The coping mechanism in short seems to be that the body recedes as an object of importance or a means of experience, and the mental experience of the world is what remains and is heightened; and since the body is relegated, one experiences a withdrawal from social life and roles leading to further isolation, a desire to be self sufficient and even to deny oneself key human experiences or the status of feeling human.

[Michelle_P]

I'm not sure this is what you are looking for, but in my 30s and later, I used a form of mindful meditation to try and regain my ability to focus my mind on a problem, a skill that I had used growing up but lost in my late teens after inappropriate medical treatment, what would be called conversion therapy today.

I found that in this state my problem solving ability was enhanced, and the distraction I constantly had from what I now know was gender dysphoria was suppressed, along with much of my emotional consciousness.  I could escape into this state for many hours at a time, and applied this to my engineering discipline.  I had great job performance at the expense of being a terrible human being.

While in this state the world and other people seemed less than real, nuisances interfering with my purpose that were readily ignored.  This was arguably an unhealthy abuse of what is normally a healthy mental hygiene practice.

Even today, I have to be careful when concentrating on a task to catch myself before I drop into this state, lest I cause emotional harm to those around me. 

[PurpleWolf]

My own reply:

Pretty much what Zinnia described there sums up my life up to this point !

Especially this sentence hit a nerve:
"Feeling like a veil or glass wall separates you from the world"
I've literally felt that. And said that. Whenever I'm misgendered or thought of as a woman I feel like the other person just perceives me 'wrong' as if he was looking at me through a distorting glass. And I'm somehow trapped inside that glass - like I know I'm me, but the outside world is unable to see that, and it's totally frustrating.

As a kid I wasn't allowed to express my boy side with clothing or toys and was a depressed and emotionally abused child in general, so I was a total zombie. A depressed kid. My mom was super controlling and I learned I wasn't allowed to state my opinion on anything or even have one, so I completely dissociated myself from my true emotions, feelings, thoughs, opinions and ideas... at least regarding gender. The best example of that would be that I got two awful gifts for my bday once, from friends: a hideous mermaid statue and a truly repulsive Pocahontas poster. I absolutely hated both but felt I wasn't allowed to express that, so my mom put the poster up the wall and placed that statue on my windowsill... And I had to look at the items every day for goodness how long - but zombied out.

From an early age I learned I had to endure unpleasant situations and things I didn't like - but could do nothing about it. So just dissociated myself. I mostly lived my childhood inside my head in a fantasy world. And even irl I escaped to playing characters in uncomfortable situations - a form of dissociation too. 

I was full of anger - but wasn't allowed to express my anger at all. My mom tried to make it like i hadn't a separate identity from her at all. She loved to dress us up in similar clothes... and when strangers commented on how we looked alike it made me cringe.

But I learned to emotionally separate myself from my emotions, anger, dysphoria, uncomfortable situations etc. like it wasn't happening to me. Or by completely blocking it out of my mind. I felt I had to endure, endure, and endure. Endure but not live.

I kept on doing that in adult life when I was denied access to treatment at 16. That was the final blow in a row of many, stretching throughout my childhood. I felt I had had enough and would never again allow anyone to make decisions for me, including succumbing to that screening at the trans process. So I never went back.

That hurt like hell and I had a mental breakdown for not getting treatment - but applied my old coping method for that too: dissociating. I became totally numb and zombie-like and tried to pretend it didn't really matter. Like it was a no big deal. I felt they destroyed my life, but determined to live, I kept on enduring, hoping I could afford top surgery someday on my own.

Eventually that led to me dissociating myself from being a guy, from being trans, from life, from people... Not wanting to interact with anyone like this... And envisioning a lonely future for myself where I would achieve my dreams, yes, but only interacting with my spouse. I felt I was unable to have genuine contact with people, like this. So I totally dissociated myself from even wanting that in the first place.

My true feelings on things come up as strong physical sensations like cringing in the stomach or feeling 'acute wrongness' about something, like misgendering and being treated as a woman. I have very strong reactions to things like my deadname and that I absolutely refused to use that anywhere, ever. But I dissociated myself from life like all that didn't matter, really.

My no 1 and main coping strategy has always been, 'if you can't change it or do anything about it, don't think about it'. And that applies to my gender and anything dysphoria enducing. It doesn't really change my chest if I get anxious as hell about it, does it? So I can use that time doing something else, more productive. But also that is a form of dissociation. It's interesting to ponder whether things like that are dissociating behavior, mental strength, or positive attitude? Or perhaps all three?

But thinking like that does distance myself from even dysphoria. At times I get thoughts like, 'is this really that bad?' 'I can cope like this through life just fine, right?' 'Am I really even trans...?' And then my TRUE feelings come out as strong physical reactions, extreme anger, and cringing. And also as gender euphoria and/or sense of 'normalness' when I'm treated as a guy.

But I could really say I'm a master of dissociation when it comes to my gender and life in general...! I'm so used to feeling numb, zombie-like, suppressing my anger and true feelings, used to general unpleasantness all around me - that that has become my natural state. That I don't even expect much else or expect my life could dramatically improve with things like T. I know either way I'm gonna survive and continue on living (coz I'm not suicidal - far from it!), but so used to feeling sucky and numb that I can't really picture much else.

Now during 2018 my reality has starting to shift a bit though... And I'm learning things I thought were 'out of reach' for me or impossible are indeed possible...! The biggest change being that when I legally changed my name in February, I've felt normal and happy ever since. And noticed some nasty noise that's been there all my LIFE just shut off, just like that. I had become so used to it, I didn't even notice its existence before . And now I've gotten so used to feeling like this, better, more normal, more like me, and like I'm actually LIVING MY LIFE NOW - that my whole life up to that point now feels like a distant dream, like it never happened.

I now have a peculiar feeling I'm actually LIVING, like ALIVE. And able to take concrete steps to affect my life and change my future. I'm still so used to dissociating that I'm almost scared of living and being true to myself, though ofc always tried to be as much as possible. But for the first time I have a strong feeling I'm living MY life now.

During my whole adult life since that 16 I've had this strange feeling I'm not living, like at all. I only exist inside my own head, and have no connection to the outside world. Like not even the human species. And even my physical abode, my body, does not reflect who I am.

I still have these feelings that my mind and body are totally separate, but still kinda 'me'. Like I know the real me is my mind and in my mind I'm a guy. But then also I'm physically female and I have to 'like' myself physically too, to some degree at least to not hate myself's guts. If I connect too much with my physical body, I fear I'm losing 'myself' as a guy. And if I remind myself too much how female my body actually is (and what others all the time see) it makes me question my sanity. So I just cope with blocking that out of my mind, being on my computer as much as possible, chatting with people online... forgetting what I actually look like.

I managed to cope through life with periods of not binding (!), being treated as a woman, residing in this physical form. and if I think about it too much, I become depressed and anxious, so I don't.

Like in DID, somehow I'd like to reconnect my mind and body... Only my mind keeps playing these tricks on me by questioning if I should do that by accepting my female form or by transitioning and trying to change it more male. It's almost like... as if my physical self was my 'alter' saying 'I'm you too, don't change me!'...! And I want to love myself, and also my physical self/body... but my mind/inside is a guy that just keeps hating everything in it. It's a battle between how much I hate my physical femaleness depending on what perspective I take. 

If I take a 'I'm me, inside my mind=a 100% guy' perspective, I hate everything in it and everything feels wrong. If I take 'I've survived all these years looking like this, it's not that bad' perspective I can enjoy my body and sex and exercise and moving it, and kinda liking aspects of, it not most of it! My breasts I don't ever like - but sometimes I feel 'wrong/guilty' about mutilating my 'healthy body' via surgery. If I take a perspective of 'I know I'm trans and just happened to be born as female but it's not that bad coz I can change most of it via HRT and top surgery' I can connect to most of my body as 'myself', like pretty much all of it except for breasts. I can see my legs and arms and the wholeshebang as 'me' with just minor details to tweak with T. But it's a constant battle between extreme dysphoria and general acceptance within me.   

Also the fact I'm able to dissociate dysphoria away makes me question my real emotions and ability to make rational decisions for myself. Like 'do I even know my true thoughts on anything?' Did the mind learn to hate the body and dissociate from it? Do my body and mind make a complete human being, and I should take my body into consideration too...? Or is my body just a lump of flesh and the mind the master who controls it? In that case, am I really 'born in the wrong body' and trapped in it or by it? Like an actual guy in a female body? That is quite an excruciating thought. So I'd rather think my body is also 'me' or part of me, at least. And precious as such. Or am I just a human being, a female-bodied individual, who likes to present as a guy in the world? In that case I'm unique and can even embrace my uniqueness as 'trans' and as a 'guy with a vag'. But I battle between 'everything is wrong' and 'everything is okay except for breasts' - and then I question myself for that. Why can't I accept my chest then?

But if I drop all the dissociating and coping... I become a mess. If I think about my body too hard, I don't wanna exit the house. And if I think about this body situation too hard, I want to chop my tumors off myself! And get very, very desperate and anxious.

So I mean... for trans people... some amount of dissociation is required, right? Just to survive! 

[PurpleWolf]

The coping mechanism in short seems to be that the body recedes as an object of importance or a means of experience, and the mental experience of the world is what remains and is heightened; and since the body is relegated, one experiences a withdrawal from social life and roles leading to further isolation, a desire to be self sufficient and even to deny oneself key human experiences or the status of feeling human.

Chilling...!!! But so accurate!

[PurpleWolf]

While in this state the world and other people seemed less than real, nuisances interfering with my purpose that were readily ignored. 

This!!!!

[KathyLauren]

I have had a couple of experiences that seem to fit within that umbrella, one a single incident, and one lifelong.

When I came out to my wife, I found the experience extremely stressful.  It took me six months to work up the courage to do it, and many false starts where I opened my mouth but no words came out.  When I finally did it, I had the odd experience of being a bystander listening to my voice speaking the words I had rehearsed.  Very odd, and "dissociated" is the word I use for it.

The lifelong one is that I realize now in hindsight that, in order to survive, I turned my feelings way down.  Imagine a volume control labelled "feelings".  Well, mine was turned down close to zero.  Though I could feel, I felt nothing strongly.  That explains why I was able to ignore my dysphoria for so long: I could hardly feel it. 

It affects lots of things.  I don't get food cravings, for example, which my wife thinks is really strange.  I felt nothig when my mother died.  (Well, there was a bit of history there that may play into that, but still, nothing.)  Same with my father (with no significant history).

Compulsive self-scrutiny or extreme rumination: check.
Having an ongoing and coherent dialogue with yourself: not so sure about "coherent", but check.

So I guess I'd have to say that there is another spectrum that I am on.

[PurpleWolf]

And I have to comment on these things from Zinnia's post as well (these comments mostly reflect my life as a whole, not necessarily the most recent times):

- A sense of detachment or estrangement from your own thoughts, feelings, or body: "I know I have feelings but I don't feel them"
Totally! All the time.

- Feeling split into two parts, with one going through the motions of participating in the world and one observing quietly: "There is this body that walks around and somebody else just watches"
Literally. The real me trapped inside my mind/head - and the corpse getting about in society.

- Feeling as if you have an "unreal" or absent self: "I have no self"
Sometimes I feel I'm unreal or that the world outside is unreal and the people in it. Many times my whole trans experience - or that I really do feel like I'm a guy - feels unreal. And other times my body feels unreal then - like wtf, how can this be?!

- Experiencing the world as distant, dreamlike, foggy, lifeless, colorless, artificial, like a picture with no depth, or less than real
Indeed. Mostly I've felt I'm literally living someone else's life, not my own. Like the deadname isn't ME, this body isn't ME, my life isn't MINE!!! And the outside world is just happening without me taking any part in it, it's distant and foggy and unreal. My whole life has felt like a dream - a bad dream. After the name change I felt like I woke up from that nightmare into a new, pleasant dream - but still like a dream. And now my life before that feels unreal and like a distant dream...

- Being absorbed in yourself and experiencing a compulsive self-scrutiny or extreme rumination
When don't I? Did you just read my previous post in this thread  
I ruminate all the ficking time and contemplate whether I'm trans or crazy or even real. And whether there is a possibility this could be explained in any other way. It feels so surreal being trans and having this condition coz it's so bizarre it makes it feel unreal to even exist/have it.

- Having an ongoing and coherent dialogue with yourself
Well not in a true DID/alter sense ofc... xD. But I ruminate enough to call that a dialogue inside my head!

- Feeling like a veil or glass wall separates you from the world
Literally. Already explained this. I've many times thought that a glass wall separates the real me from others/the world.

- Emotional or physical numbness, such as a feeling of having a head filled with cotton
Both. Perpetual numbness. Like life is happening to someone else with no control over it. 

- Lacking a sense of agency – feeling flat, robotic, dead, or like a "zombie"
Dead and zombie for sure!!! If I've felt like a zombie as an adult, that's nothing compared to what I felt as a child. I was a numb, depressed zombie as a kid. I usually refer to my kid-self as a 'zombie state'. If it was because my mom made me a zombie or bcos I was trans or both, I can't tell.

- Inability to imagine things
Not really... I've always had a very vivid imagination. But inability to imagine any satisfying future for myself, perhaps. Or at least not a satisfying present. I've always lived in the future, more like. In future or in the past - only now for the first time I'm actually living my life and the present.

- Being able to think clearly, but feeling as if some essential quality is lacking from your thoughts or experience of the world
Yes, absolutely. The essential quality being alive!

- A sense of disconnectedness from life, impeding you from creative and open involvement with the world
Well precisely that! Being totally isolated and not even wanting to interact with people, not even online... while having that deadname as legal name and being like this. I felt like I didn't officially exist as me, so.......!! That also made me completely disinterested in my life, taking care of things, or anything... I didn't exist. That deadname character wasn't ME! So couldn't care less. I didn't even have a name, so............! Suddenly after that name change one of the strange reality shifts was that I realized I DO care!!! And suddenly I do mind about ->-bleeped-<-! My whole perception of life has changed.

[PurpleWolf]

The lifelong one is that I realize now in hindsight that, in order to survive, I turned my feelings way down.  Imagine a volume control labelled "feelings".  Well, mine was turned down close to zero.  Though I could feel, I felt nothing strongly.  That explains why I was able to ignore my dysphoria for so long: I could hardly feel it. 

Yeah, exactly that!

[SallyChoasAura]

Erm... the coping techniques I use are actually for my depression and anxiety rather than my gender...
And they're not exactly... healthy. But I am trying to get out of them...

[LexieDragon]

My coping mechanism is to keep everything bottled up until I explode...

Yea I need to work on that...

However I feel a lot of it has been linked to my not being honest with who and what I am, despite having been laid off a few months ago, I am not as stressed as I would have been before I started accepting myself for me.

[SallyChoasAura]

Yeah... I do that a lot too...

[Virginia]

I'm glad my post was able to spark this interesting thread!
In and of itself Dissociation is a completely normal and extremely powerful coping mechanism. Problems begin to arise when a person has had to depend on it for so long that it becomes a way of life. Much as rage is an ill aimed response to suppressed anger, they begin to apply the coping mechanisms they developed to protect them from their earlier life experiences to situations they are facing in the present. This inappropriate use of the dissociation begins to negatively impact the person's life, and what had been a healthy coping mechanism becomes a psychological disorder

[PurpleWolf]

I'm glad my post was able to spark this interesting thread!
In and of itself Dissociation is a completely normal and extremely powerful coping mechanism. Problems begin to arise when a person has had to depend on it for so long that it becomes a way of life. Much as rage is an ill aimed response to suppressed anger, they begin to apply the coping mechanisms they developed to protect them from their earlier life experiences to situations they are facing in the present. This inappropriate use of the dissociation begins to negatively impact the person's life, and what had been a healthy coping mechanism becomes a psychological disorder

Good point.

[MeTony]

Depression also have these symptoms.

I have felt numb, dead inside and lifeless. But I believe that was depression because I did not see any solusion to my situation.

[PurpleWolf]

Depression also have these symptoms.

I have felt numb, dead inside and lifeless. But I believe that was depression because I did not see any solusion to my situation.

Yeah, true ofc...! Haha, what is depression and what is transness, is a good question too!

[Sephirah]

It's honestly really quite hard for me to put into words how I feel about this. And how much dissociation it actually is. Upon reading the list in your first post, some of the things definitely struck a chord with me, but some were entirely the opposite.

The closest approximation I can give is something which is attributed to people who lose one of their senses. And the assertion that the other senses heighten to compensate for it. For me, the loss of the sense of connection with the world actually heightened my sense of connection with myself. Rather than diminishing it. Like being in a room with giant windows and then someone closing the curtains. It draws your attention more to what's actually in the room. At least it did for me.

I definitely felt a disconnect between my mind and body. It's something I still feel even now. I felt like that little alien in Men In Black. Like this:

But I never felt a disconnect within my own mind. And who I am. If anything that just got stronger the further away I felt from the outside world. Being absorbed in myself - absolutely. Dreams, meditation, contemplation... all of these were, I guess, ways I have coped... and still do cope... with being myself. Staying in touch with who I am when a world can't see it. I guess like a drowning person holding onto a piece of driftwood in a storm. Holding on to where everything comes from.

Sometimes it's the only thing that's kept me going. Kept me here.

[PurpleWolf]

I definitely felt a disconnect between my mind and body. It's something I still feel even now. I felt like that little alien in Men In Black. Like this:

Hey that's a quite good one!

[LexieDragon]

I definitely felt a disconnect between my mind and body. It's something I still feel even now. I felt like that little alien in Men In Black. Like this:

Definitely a gooooood way to put it!

[Kylo]

I thought of a better analogy/example in my case. I have - literally - spent more time looking closely at my own shadow on the ground than I have in the mirror. My shadow is more familiar to me, and it always had a sort of anonymity that helps when a person is suffering from severe gender dysphoria - you know it's you, but you don't necessarily have to look too hard at it, or confront the things that bother you when you look at a shadow. Doing that a lot can lead you to have a similar attitude to your own body and self. If does end up feeling like a shadow rather than a full sense of self, and the picture you present to the world can become like one as well, filtered through the invisible problems making you hard to define, evasive and hazy. I sometimes think of my life before as the shadow of who I really was, rather than the real thing, since that was completely hidden and it was also pulling the strings with who I was and wasn't allowing myself to be and do.

The strange thing to get used to after that is NOT being a shadow of yourself any more. Trying to let the authentic stuff come through, trying to get used to the idea of being "a real person", visible, and not a flat, compressed, suppressed version of yourself.